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A rich man’s city bike.
I'm personally not a fan of electronic shifting, but it seems like electronic release of damping during a down-shift would be doable when you already have a battery and some processing power onboard. Doesn't solve the effect on suspension, but perhaps it could relieve the pedal effort to climb into the bigger gears. I'm kind of surprised we haven't seen a patent for such a thing. It would increase the size and cost of DRs, but the latest gen are already so massive, perhaps the additional weight would be lost in the noise.
I believe that thing is for rich Germans... what they call an "SUV" ebike.
100%, a high margin inventory mover. Fine for me, will get them to the levo 5 more quickly.
Mom, can we get this SUV ebike?
No, we have one of those at home.
The one at home:
These originally retailed for 7500. Full XT, and it is full suspension.
Now you can find them for 1500. It is a weird big old Caddy feeling of a bike, but with a Bosch Performance motor and is class 3.
Oh, you want to come and collect it? That'll be another 90 please.
hey Blake. stay tuned on this, hopefully later this year. I'll try to make announcements. if you follow my youtube/instagram you'll know I've been trying to shut up bikes for 10 years LOL
final stages of design making my way to first prototypes this month 😀
I’ve been contemplating making something similar to this, but not actually for a geared bike but for a full suspension single speed. I’m thinking of making a prototype with my 3d printer but I’ll need to learn CAD first lol
Why on earth would that specialized levo monstrosity only come in an sworks model... or even an sworks model at all? Why would the prospective buyer for this bike ever want factory level suspension, maven ultimate, XX transmission, with carbon wheels, bars etc? I envision the buyer for this being a commuter with too much money, a dentist that also does trail work or anyone with more ego/narcissism then common sense. Either way, none of the buyers I can project would want to shave 2-3lbs off of this bike and pay 4k more for it.
The previous bike that was targeting this segment from specialized, the tero, actually made sense for the very niche buyer that would be looking for such a thing... This thing is real life AI slop. Who knows, maybe this is the way to grab outside of the mtb niche market into a different niche where the big S has zero marketshare. It just doesn't seem like a 12k entry point is the way to go about that.
As a some sort of specialized fanboy, it's really a shame watching what that company has turned in to but still kind of curious how many more models they can put out of that same frame.
They are just trying to charge whatever so they can recoup some of the demo development costs lol
It doesn't seem real. Does this appeal to anyone?
Maybe they'll sell them all in Dubai to guys driving jacked-up, six-wheeled G-Wagons or something.
I can share an example of flip chips for wheel size done poorly because I owned a 2024 trek session for a year.
Based on the geo numbers, the bike was clearly designed around a 29" rear wheel, but Trek marketing decided that sure, you can throw a 27.5 rear wheel on it as long as you put it in the high flip chip position.
What results is a largely rear biased bike. The bike rides so much better with a 29" rear wheel I went back to that, despite persistent butt buzzing because I'm a normal height dude.
Would be sweet on those 5 days every spring I’m out doing trail side chainsaw work.
Is there a new POC Coron on the go?
Specialized single handedly making this sport look pretentious as hell. I dont care who you are or how “cooool” it is, if youre buying that bike, Im going to laugh at you. Tahoe about to be filled with this shit.
Well..my first reaction was the same.
On a second thought, disregarding the ridiculous price...I'd be more keen to have this than most e-bikes that came out recently.
I generally don't enjoy riding e-bikes, so if I do, it's for trail building. I'd actually take this thing for carrying tools etc. Maybe I'm just low key trying to repeat my "ebike isn't a mtb" thing, as in my view an emtb fits somewhere between a shovel and a VW Jetta, but for such purpose it actually makes some sense.
But then again you look at the price and I'm back to "I'd rather walk than ebike"
You know what? That's actually quite fair. While the bike obviously looks silly at first glance, a few of them would probably be a decent purchase for a well-funded trail association for trail maintenance purposes.
luckily you can just buy the cheaper alloy levo 4 and then add the racks, saving you 7k each.
I highly doubt trail associations need an Sworks bike that costs 3x the price of a good enough alternative.
We considered them for our trail crew but people were hesitant since they didn’t actually see the rack in person. They also debated whether there were many days that you’d actually bike in with lots of tools for one day of work. Vesus walking in with tools, stashing them, and biking in the subsequent days. I thought the bike and rack was a good idea.
It sure what those guys are thinking. But whatever it is it’s goofy as heck
It absolutely seems like a “hey ChatGPT can you analyze the bike and outdoor industries and come up with 5 ideas/opportunities that would generate profit for our international bicycle company? Preferably with some buzzwords attached thank you!”
This is grotesque. But I wonder what kind of range you could get out of it if you were to really stretch out the motor and match a traditional bike packing effort
That Levo X is weird with that parts kit but put Deore level stuff on it and paint it camo and they'll sell an absolute shit ton of them.
It’s the combo of paint and build kit that boggles my mind. You’re right, there is a market for this kind of bike but this particular build is bizarro
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